XAF Blazor/WinForms UI — Case Study by DataWerkes: Field Services Management Platform (TimeWerkes)
Meet DataWerkes (an independent software vendor in Alberta, Canada) and Keith Courneyea (a founder), who has been using our Cross-Platform .NET App UI (XAF) since 2019.
We recently published a case study about their flagship commercial product (TimeWerkes) powered by XAF WinForms/Blazor UI as well as DevExpress Blazor / WinForms (Grid & Data Editors, Charts, Pivot Grid, TreeList, Scheduler, Rich Text Editor), Reporting and BI Dashboard components.
Here is how Keith Courneyea described their product TimeWerkes (has been in active client use since late 2024):
TimeWerkes is a commercial, end-to-end field services management platform for industrial contractors. It manages the full business lifecycle of a contracting operation — from initial quoting through job execution, field ticketing (aka time reporting), inspection reporting, and final invoicing — within a single integrated application available as both a Windows desktop client and a Blazor Server web application. Currently the Blazor app in the primary client.
The platform is architected as a core business foundation with industry-specific modules that can be added as client requirements evolve. The core handles workflows common to all contractors: quotes, jobs, field tickets (aka timesheets) with labour and billable items, rate sheets, approval workflows, staff and certification management, equipment tracking, document management, and full invoicing. Specialized modules adapt this base for specific industries.
TimeWerkes is offered commercially. It is built on Microsoft SQL Server with Azure SQL in production and uses Azure Blob Storage for all document/image attachments, Azure Functions for background workflow processing, and Azure Communication Services for automated email notifications.
DataWerkes has been in operation for seven years. Keith's decision to build on DevExpress in 2019 was not the result of a product evaluation or a recommendation — it was a return. He had worked with DevExpress components in the early 2000s and had a positive experience that stayed with him. When he decided to pursue serious application development, DevExpress was the first place he went back to.
The specific choice of XAF as the framework was driven by what Keith needed as a first-time C# developer with a clear vision of what he wanted to build. XAF's model-driven approach — where defining a domain class in XPO produces a working UI, security system, and data layer without writing boilerplate infrastructure code — meant that Keith could focus on the business logic he understood deeply and let the framework handle the rest.
And here’s what Keith Courneyea said about XAF's primary benefits:
TimeWerkes uses the full breadth of the XAF module ecosystem. The Security System provides role-based access control across the entire application without custom authentication code. The Audit Trail module — extended through Llamachant's enhanced implementation — tracks every change across all 120 domain entities. The Validation module enforces business rules declaratively. Conditional Appearance drives dynamic UI behaviour. The Scheduler handles staff and job scheduling. Reports Module V2 powers 34 reports covering every business document in the system, from client-facing inspection reports to internal job cost summaries and invoices.
Critically, XAF's cross-platform architecture meant that the same core module and XPO domain model powers three deployment targets simultaneously: a WinForms desktop client, a Blazor Server web application, and an Azure Functions background processing host. A team of any size would find that a significant time saving. For a product owned by one person and built in partnership with a small development firm, it is what made the product possible at all.
Dave Hesketh of Llamachant Technology Ltd., whose team serves as the primary development partner on TimeWerkes, describes the XAF ecosystem as central to how Llamachant approaches every engagement. Llamachant's own framework extensions — including the workflow engine, Azure Blob file attachment integration, AutoIncrementingID, and LlamaLogger — are themselves built on top of XAF, which is a measure of how extensible and production-ready the platform is.
Read the full article to learn why DataWerkes chose XAF for cross-platform RAD project development and what they liked about our tools.
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Thanks,
Dennis Garavsky
Principal Product Manager
dennis@devexpress.com
